The New York Post Up To Their Old Tricks With A Ridiculous Misleading Headline On Tanaka's First Outing
Post – Toronto got the watered-down version of Yankees ace Masahiro Tanaka that they expected, and roughed him up in a 6-1, Opening Day rout at the Stadium. Instead of the electric All-Star from last year, the Blue Jays faced a gas-less facsimile, one they said will have to make adjustments to get by with his injured elbow.
“He was throwing 89, 90 [mph]. That’s more than hittable. It’s just when he moves the ball he keeps guys off balance,’’ Dalton Pompey said. “His command was all right. … He was really electric last year. Not to say that he wasn’t this year, but it was just a couple mistakes.’’
The Blue Jays punished those mistakes, Tanaka suffering the second-worst inning of his Bombers career (a five-run third) and shortest stint for a Yankees Opening Day starter in 30 years (four innings).
The New York Post doing New York Post things. Might as well have included “You’ll never guess what happens next…” at the end of the headline. How any real writer can take that quote and come up with that headline is beyond me because what Pompey said was a Major League player can hit a 90 mph Fastball but Tanaka does a good job of moving the ball around and just happened to make a few mistakes. From reading the whole article, the Blue Jays really didn’t have anything bad to say about Tanaka other than he missed a few spots. No wonder newspapers are going out of business.
As for the actual game yesterday, it was not ideal. The weather was great, the fans were in good spirits, and everyone was accepting of A-Rod, but the game itself did not go as planned. Aside from a rough 3rd inning, Tanaka didn’t look that bad and an error on a sac bunt didn’t help the cause at all. Tanaka did try to get inside on an Encarnacion with a fastball and that is the threat of a big league power hitter. If you don’t get it inside enough, he is going to take it out of the park, doesn’t matter who the guy on the mound is.
On the other side of the game, the offense looked terrible at times. Didi popping out to 3rd on his first pitch in front of the home crowd, then making the 3rd out at 3rd base and robbing the fans of another A-Rod at bat – also not ideal. But lets all relax. It was one game and there were a lot of hard hit balls that just couldn’t find a hole. Once we get into a normal baseball schedule playing almost every day, these guys can get into a rhythm and put up some offense.
The sky isn’t falling here people. I know we saw KFC dusting off all of his party favors from the Jets week 1 Super Bowl party to throw a game 1 World Series champions party, but it’s just one game. The Yankees are going to probably lose about 69 more of them before the end of the year. I’m sure they will have plenty of games where they give up 6 runs, thats why they play 162 of them. I have always said that every game matters, but lets not define an entire season that just started.
As Yankee fans, we are professional winners, it’s just what we do, so it’s time to start acting like it and let the Met fans punch themselves out of the season by June, the same time their team plays themselves out of the season.